Epidemiology

The term "advanced heart failure" is often used to characterise heart failure patients with severe symptoms, recurrent episodes of decompensation and severe cardiac dysfunction (Metra et al., 2007). Typically, the patient’s clinical condition deteriorates progressively despite maximal therapy, with worsening of symptoms and severe impairment of functional capacity, although this may take years. Hard data on the epidemiology of advanced heart failure has been difficult to obtain because the condition lacked a uniform definition, but it was previously suggested that about 6 million people have this condition in the USA (Norton et al., 2011).

To overcome this, the Heart Failure Association of the European Society of Cardiology (HFA-ESC) have published proposed criteria to define advanced heart failure (Table 1).

Advanced heart failure is defined by the presence of all the following criteria despite optimal guideline-directed treatment.

Various estimations of the prevalence of advanced heart failure have given figures from 6–25% of the total heart failure population, but the true prevalence of advanced heart failure remains uncertain (Nohria et al., 2002). More recently, it has been estimated to comprise a lower, but still substantial, 1–10% of the overall heart failure population (Crespo-Leiro et al., 2018).

It can be assumed that in the coming years the number of patients classified as having advanced heart failure will increase. This is the consequence of an ageing population and improved survival due to compliance with current chronic heart failure medications (Fruhwald et al., 2016).